how to fall in love
by deaaa
Summary: a five-step guide


**I.**

Your name sounds like honey in her mouth, and maybe that's where your nickname for her first originated but you'd never say it out loud. It's always been easy to believe that you'd never find your soulmate, it was all so ambiguous. Everyone said your name, why would it sound any different coming from one particular person?

Now you know what all the fuss is about, people exclaiming left right centre that you'd _know_ when they said your name. You'd just know. And you do, because there is something so fragile about the way she said it, like your entire being is a precious thing. You would swear the entire world got brighter when the word slipped out from between her lips, barely a whisper and the loudest yell ever at the same time.

You reach for her hand and lace your fingers together because her eyes are as wide as marbles and you don't think you've ever seen anyone so effortlessly beautiful. Then she breaks out into a grin so wide that you have to blink because dear lord she has to be made of sunshine for this to be possible.

And then she's saying your name again and again, and you almost melt into a puddle right then and there but you don't because you're holding her hand and it's honest to god the best feeling in the world. She's crying now and you reach up with your other hand to wipe the tears away while whispering _her_ name and she rests her head on your shoulder like it's the most natural thing in the world.

(It is.)

 **II.**

You wake up one morning and half-heartedly glance at your wrist and almost blanch when you see the numbers. 0 days 6 hours 34 minutes 19 seconds is a very big change from what it was before. Blank. You hadn't really expected anything from the timer since it was first implanted into your wrist. If you were being honest to yourself, there had been hope in the first few days. The specialist had said it took a while to recalibrate, but a while turned into a year which turned into five years which turned into ten and here you were at seventeen years old with nothing on your wrist but a blank screen.

Until today that is. But you refuse to hope, because it could just as easily get wiped blank again. Six hours is a long time, and why would it suddenly light up today anyway? So you suck it up and go to school, completely forgetting about it until the bell rings for the end of the day and you're standing at your locker, shoving books into your bag while humming the song that had been playing on the radio that morning. The hallway is deserted because there's a football game going on and everyone is out on the field to watch it and you sigh because why would anyone want to watch a bunch of boys slamming into each other for a tiny brown ball?

You only remember when it starts to beep and you heave a sigh, twisting your wrist to confirm that it's gone blank again only to be met with three very large red zeroes coupled with a five that's switching to four then three then two then one. The unmistakable squeaking sound of shoes on linoleum rings from the right, bringing with it another beeping noise and you take a deep breath, staring into the darkness of your locker before slamming it shut and spinning around.

The girl is standing literally two feet away from you. Her face is nonchalantly blank, so you stare back, fingers underneath the strap of that bag that's sitting heavily on your shoulder. There is no jolt of electricity that shoots through your veins, there is no sudden realization that she is the one. There's nothing at all really, and you start to wonder if this might just be a horrible joke.

Then you notice the girl has tearstains down her cheeks and you instinctively reach out to wipe them away, lowering your arm so that your bag drops to the floor next to your converse clad feet. She's in your arms before you can reach her, and suddenly you have a stranger sobbing into the collar of your shirt because that's what you are, strangers. For now.

When she pulls back and holds you at arm's length, you can see something magical in her watery brown eyes. You think you could very easily love those eyes, and maybe that's what the timer was all along. Not some magical device that could lead you to your happily ever after, not the yellow brick road that promised a wizard. Just something that brought two people together, after that, it was up to them.

(And you think you did pretty well, all things considered.)

 **III.**

No one ever really plans their life, least of all you with all the spontaneity in your bones. No one really plans their life but things happen anyway, that's just how life works. It's raining the day you see her, and you're sitting on the metal bench in the middle of the subway station, watching as people walk by. You'd forgotten about soulmates, because people usually find theirs by the time they turn fourteen but here you are two years later, no closer to finding yours than you were when you were five.

The girl stumbles down the steps, and the movement catches your eye. You can't hear her, that's a side effect of being deaf, but the way she flails her arms toward the wall, it's impossible to miss. She looks up when she's stable, and catches your eye with a funny little grin. That's when the entire world starts to crackle, like when the TV can't get good signal.

Colours blossom out from behind the girl and you can't help but gawk because this, this is so much more than your mother described. This is so much more than anything you've ever read about. Everything is painted in vibrant hues of what must be green and white and pink and your eyes inevitably latch onto the girl again. She's the one, isn't she?

You raise an eyebrow at her, but she seems as normal as ever, and this is when it hits you that your trigger might not be hers. There were stories about this, and you suppose her trigger must be something other than sight, which is weird because you're deaf, not blind, but the universe worked whichever way it wanted to. The girl comes flouncing over to sit down next to you and you can tell from the way her mouth is moving that she's babbling, probably asking questions about your weird little ten-second lapse before.

It takes a while, and a lot of hand signals, for her to pick up the fact that you can't hear what she's saying. For better or for worse you're never going to hear her voice. You smile sadly at her, and she reciprocates with a tight hug, and then you both sit there in the silence that you're so used to, watching people as they walk by.

You're surprised to see her in school the next day, and she comes with a notebook prepared, hurriedly penning down what she wants to say. She's new here, just moved from outside the state, and she really hopes you can be friends. You smile to yourself, because it is impossible for you not to love her already, and nod. You think if you could hear, her laughter would have echoed off your eardrums.

It's easy after that, to slip into friendship, and you wonder if this is a soulmate thing or if you just work well together. She starts to learn how to sign things and sooner or later the notebook isn't needed to communicate anymore. You fall into the endless string of things she has to say, and after that it's not difficult to admit to yourself that you're falling for her as well. You still haven't figured out her trigger yet, it wasn't touch because then she would have seen colour on the first day, and it wasn't sight either because that was you. For now it doesn't matter, because you're happy just by being with her.

And then one day it hits you, not unlike a freight train. It must be sound, she has never heard your voice because you've never really needed to speak. There's a level of communication here that rises above words, and besides, you've never told her that you saw colour when she met your eyes. Lingering in your peripheral vision is the possibility that you aren't her soulmate, but you refuse to think about that and shove it into the back of your mind.

And then it explodes out of you with terrifying force, your voice scratchy and barely there as you yell her name. Looking back, she probably wasn't in any imminent danger, but all you could register back then was the flash of the car and redredred running down the asphalt. She pauses, flinches even, as you rush forward and pull her back toward safety. It's then that you remember, the notion that your voice could be the trigger.

She's not meeting your eyes, in fact, she's not looking at you at all. Her head is tilted up toward the sky and you purse your lips, unable to discern what's going on. You shuffle your feet on the sidewalk, looking down at the dust that's rising around your shoes when you feel a pressure on your chin and you look up, heart thumping wildly in your chest.

And then her lips are crashing into yours so hard that you see stars and your legs would have buckled had she not been holding you up around your waist. You're still in shock when she pulls back but her eyes are shining and she's taking your hands and spinning the both of you around and around and around.

(As it turns out, you are her soulmate after all.)

 **IV.**

You wake up the morning of your eighth birthday with a set of fingerprints encircling your wrist. There are five of them in all, a spattering of obsidian across your pale skin. You spend the better part of the morning wrapping your own hand around your wrist, but it never really fits properly. Your mom says that there's only one person in the world who's fingers will fit perfectly around your wrist and you almost scoff, but secretly you hope.

You move into the city when you turn sixteen, and your mom says it's because it's easier to find a job there but you know it's because eight years have come and gone and you're nowhere nearer to finding the person who's hand fits perfectly around your wrist. And just maybe, she can see the darkness that's slowly inching its way into your eyes.

You start sophomore year knowing no one, narrowing your eyes at your locker as you grab the books that you need before slamming the metal door harder than you need to. The only open seat is at the front next to a girl who looks like her limbs are too long for her body, and then some. You drop into the chair, pushing your books to the edge of the table and picking up a pencil to twirl between your fingers. History has never been something that you liked, school has never been something that you liked actually, and you look forward to when you can finally get out of it.

The girl next to you has her eyes closed and is mumbling something incoherently when the door swings open and your teacher walks in, setting his briefcase on his desk and immediately going for the blackboard. There's a clunk next to you and you look to the right, raising an eyebrow to see the girl with her head on the wooden desk in front of her.

The teacher looks like he doesn't want to be here either, and you don't blame him in the slightest because neither do you, but he has a job to do and he better do it right because if you have to sit in this classroom for an hour you better learn something useful. It takes you a total of three seconds to figure out why the girl next to you let her head fall to the desk when the teacher walked in. It takes another two and a half for you to realize that there's going to be a lot of learning in this class.

Three days, that's all it took for the girl that sits next to you in history to try and make friends. You're surprised she even waited that long, but she used the three days to become friends with every single other person in that school and you would swear she arrived knowing no one else.

She runs up to your before you can get a foot out the door and reaches to grab at your arm before you can stuff your hands into your jacket pockets. The sudden warmth around your wrist causes you to wrench your hand back and take a look at it. The fingerprints are no longer black, they're glowing a pale gold, and the warmth is slowly spreading through your bones.

The girl is staring at her hand, and then she latches her fingers around your wrist again and the warmth increases tenfold. You look up at her, eyes wide against her megawatt grin. Your mother was right after all, there's only one person in the world who's fingers would fit perfectly around your wrist, and now you've found her.

She stares at you for another fraction of a second before pulling you out of the doorway of the classroom and into the janitor's closet across the hall. All this time her hand never leaves your wrist and you can't help but think she's doing this on purpose. The closet is stuffy and claustrophobic and there is too much heat in your veins but the girl is pulling down the collar of her shirt and you notice the set of prints that are there, freckled around her collarbone. You also notice that for the hand to fit there, it would have to go over her heart.

She's looking at you expectantly, so you get up from where you were leaning against the rough cement wall and amble over slowly, taking your time to match the fingerprints against your own warm hand before pressing down. The result is instantaneous, there is a jolt of something that burrows its way through your nerves all the way to your toes, and the prints that were previously black are now glowing platinum in the faint darkness of the room.

You stand there, two and a half feet away from a girl that you barely know, the luminescence of two sets of fingerprints bathing you both in a soft light. She cocks her head at you, and you finally allow a shadow of a grin to cross your face, raising your wrist so that it's level with her collarbone. Your mother had said meeting your soulmate wouldn't be perfect, but you think this damn well is as close as you could get.

(It only takes a second and a half for it to get even better.)

 **V.**

A tug, that's how it starts. Something gentle, like sliding a feather around the dips and curves of your ribcage to settle around the beating of your heart. You're barely ten years old and this is the first tug of many, the invisible bond had always been there but this is the first time it's done something noticeable.

You can feel happiness flooding into your chest, and you can't help but smile at that. Somewhere out there, the person this string connected you to was happy, and that was something special. You feel the tug again, and raise a hand to swipe at the air where the string should be. Your mother says it only appears for a short time, at the right time, and you're going to have to run toward whoever is at the other end. You don't much like running, but you think for the person on the other end of your string, you'd run to the horizon line and never look back.

The tugs happen sporadically, whenever the person on the other end of the line feels something strongly, you've realized. They probably felt a tug the day your mother got you an art set, and when you came home to a ferret on your bed. It's comforting, to know that someone is there for you when you're happy or sad or angry, and you hope it's comforting for whoever it is on the other end, that you're here for them.

In tenth grade you become best friends with a girl who seems to exude sunshine. Her grin is always blindingly radiant and, string or not, you find yourself falling for her. Her fingers tangle in yours on the subway ride home, and you think this must be how heaven feels like because your heart is thumping wildly between the flowers of your ribcage.

The next day you find her smiling at a boy and your heart rolls up to settle between your teeth, falling and tumbling to the floor. You know this isn't going to work, you know your string connects you to someone important, but you can't help but feel like she was that someone important. It's not easy to put your heart back into your chest, stretching a grin across your face as she talks and talks and talks about the new boy. It's not easy but you do it anyway, because this is what heaven feels like, right?

It happens on a hot morning, the heat bleeding into your skin as golden fingers of sunlight crawl their way across the floor. The entire world must be burning because it is not supposed to be this hot, not so late into the year. You feel a tug on your ribs again, and years of telling yourself that there's nothing there doesn't serve its purpose to dissuade you from looking down. This time though, this time there's something there.

Threads of interlocking silver and gold resonate in the air, and you smile when you realize, after all this time, that the string was knitted around your heart. It's another fraction of a second before you remember that you're supposed to look for the person on the other end, and your eyes follow the path that glows faintly toward your right.

When you look up, she's smiling at you. That heavenly, ethereal smile that makes you feel as if the angels have come to earth. Your string leads to her, and you almost laugh, because all this time you've been wrapped around her finger. It's more truth than anything else, after all.

You fall for her all over again, and it's definitely easy, you decide, to give your heart to her. It's definitely easy to smile.

(And she has always been smiling back.)


End file.
